EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) – The Eau Claire City- County Health Department held an update on Monday, July 6th. The county currently has a total of 290 positive cases of COVID-19 with an estimated 183 recovered. A recap of the press conference is below.
Officials are asking people to keep their circles small and continue to wear mask.
There has been contact tracing scams in the area. They will not ask for you social security number or bank account/personal information. They will ask for your address, symptoms and ask you to isolate.
Questions:
Has the recent surge caused stress on the capacity at local hospitals?
-Not hearing of any stress so far to their systems. The goal is to keep the spread slow and away from higher risk individuals.
Has there been more stress when it comes to contact tracing?
-Last week, their capacity was getting pushed by the larger amount of cases and the expanded amount of contacts. They have new/additional people doing case investigations and contacts. They have got a lot of experience quickly with the new cases.
Are they to a point where they may need to close businesses and other services again?
-That is based on the data. They would like to stay steady with the order, but it is possible they may have to step back some services and focus on the places where they are seeing the disease spread. Will look at the data and decide with the new order that comes out Thursday.
How bad does it have to get for them to close up different places?
-If we are red in one area and heath capacity starts to get impacted, they may. It depends on how quickly the disease is being spread. It is key that people follow the 6-foot distancing guidelines.
Are there plans for widespread testing of the Eau Claire County Jail?
-The health dept. and jail have been working together. Right now, they are recommending close contacts and those that are higher risk to be tested. Different jails have different procedures that may create a need for additional testing. They are starting to explore asymptomatic testing. A”one-time” testing of everybody won’t tell them much. They are nearing the capacity to do more testing of larger asymptomatic groups. They number of cases at the Eau Claire jail remains the same with 5.
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